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Nation Building World Map

Hey guys,

I have been looking around the forums for a while now, admiring what great maps the resident artists are creating, and after making a few attempts myself I have decided its best to leave it to those who actually have talent.

Now, while I know I have no talent in making maps, I am a bit talented at making nation building roleplaying games. NBRPs. The only problem with the genre is that apart from our real world planet map, there is no other source material for game maps. After doing this for years using Earth over and over and over again has became tedius.

With that in mind I throw myself at the great artists out there, meaning here on the forum, to help me. I know many of your are busy, and would rather do a paid map, but I sadly can't afford it. So I beg you guys to help me. My request I think is not that complicated, I am mostly just begging for your imagination on that which is concerning the world map, part where I lack deeply imagination.

Hm, the type of map I need is one that I might be able to edit, color-wise only, afterwards. It needs to be a world map, around two main continents and a few islands, big and small, depends. If it can be three main continents and around them or between them small and big islands than that would be great.

The idea of the map is that I want to divide the continents and islands into provinces for gameplay reasons as a way to keep track of players on it. So after the map is partitioned I shall do that quick colouring of one province to adapt it to the necessity of the game. So taking the future colouring in mind if there were a way to have on the continents and islands mountains, forests, plains, hills and marshes drawn, not coloured, it would be great. The way they should be drawn small scale, as secondary details to the map.

For colours the only colour I need is that of the sea. Apart from that, I don't think the map needs anything else. I need the continents and islands for places where players can pick their nations, the mountain, hills, forests, plains and marshes, details to help me establish their income and resources, and their own rp setting, and that's about it.

Quality & Size

A 2000x2000 size would be good, and as for quality, good enough to attract people and make them wanna join in, to be eye pleasing.
Also if there were too maps that would be great, the same map, in two form. The first one is the map as request above, the second one only if the author desires to do it, and by that I mean the same map, but with the province borders drawn by the author of the map, if he wishes to do it.

Copyright - The copyright goes to the author of the map. I will retain the right to use the map for my games.

With one last line, thank you guys for reading this, and if anyone wants to help and do this, I would be more eternally gratefull.

If you have a digital camera or scanner, get a piece of paper, wad it up and smooth it out several times. Then take a picture, load it into your favorite image editing software, make a new layer, and trace around some of the crinkly lines to get chunky shapes just how you like them. By following the lines you'll get "natural" edges and you can put in the rough things where you want. Hide the background layer and you're left with the outline of your continents.

If you want a purely digital result, you can make one in any number of ways. http://www.ridgenet.net/~jslayton/CGTutorial/ shows how to use ProFantasy's Fractal Terrains product to generate reasonable results. http://www.ridgenet.net/~jslayton/FunWithWilburVol6/ shows how to use the Wilbur program to generate an "island". A few of these tossed onto the same image using your favorite image editing program will give the appearance of a world. Continent or island is largely a matter of scale...

What exactly is a Nation Building Role Playing Game? It sounds intriguing. Also, I might be able to help you. Actually, check the links in my sig...you are free to use anything I have already posted if you like.

Oh hey, Nation Building Role Playing Game is a strategy game basically with roleplay elements. Players need a map and depending on the number of players you wish to have the map should be bigger or smaller. Each player has his own nation and he roleplays in the game as its leader, ambassors, spies, conducting diplomacy, secret missions, wars against other players or NPC nations, etc. If you ever played Risk or even better Europa Universalis, this is a written roleplaying game in that perspective. It's not overly known or popular as there are few communities who do this, I only know of two.

Of course there are many other forums who have similar things, or web browser games that do something of this sort, but the NBRPG style that I know is more ordonate, gives more control to players, and it's pretty damn fun to be honest. I've played some games that lasted around a year or so, with players being killed off, having to pick new nations, while others just banned together in a strong alliance and took over half of Earth map. It's fun ^^, and different GMs use different systems, some more complex then others.

In the community I had been in I did a lot of improvements and still am working to make the game completely GM free. Right now the system needs GM to act on the consequences of player acts, while I love the game, that makes the GM work hard and takes time the players might not like to waste. So I am still working on bits and pieces to make it as less invasive from the GM as possible, but it's hard on my little own ...

I checked your maps, I can use both Opal Island and Ruarc -Easter Political, actually both have what I needed ^^, the city because of the white houses, and the region map because it shows plains, mountians forests and it has predefined borders. If you want to hop in and help GM this game and play it :p, you are more then welcomed. It won't be time consuming once it gets going, it will more player driven than GM driven.